The Outer Darkness
Beyond the edge of a world where the laws of Time govern over all properly ordered lands, and where civilisation coddles the rational minds of men, there exists the emptiness of lower heaven. Here, the wind whips wild and untamed in the void of space, its incessant howls conspiring to deafen any who sail past well-chartered seas. Supposing one’s life, in the absence of oxygen and water could be sustained, and supposing one struck a course out from the furthest reaches of creation, no mortal entities would be observed, save the occasional sea-bird blown astray by a freak gale or the occasional wyvern revelling in its natural element. To most, this realm would be considered the harshest of environments, for even the briefest of gusts here is likely to catch flyers and bring them to a swift death upon a protruding rock face. If, however, one were to traverse untold spans of distance beyond the great waterfalls that cascade over the world’s flanks, the cacophony of hurricanes would fall to a mere whisper, and in the perpetual twilight the very fabric of reason itself would begin to bend and warp. Not even the most intrepid slyphs of air dare to venture out this far from the safety of Mithras’s light, and nothing stirs in the dead quietus except for the few angels that patrol the edge of reality itself. To travel further still, across countless multiverses of nothing to where logic and sanity stretch to their limits and then proceed to snap, is to finally come to the Outer Darkness. The Outer Darkness Far older than the realms which compose reality, the Outer Darkness is the fundamental essence of Oblivion. It is a place of amorphous blackness and primordial silence, a sea of chaos in which float the tattered remnants of corroded worlds and the ashes of dead suns. This lightless dimension is the home of demons. Oblivion and the Void In the beginning, there was only the emptiness of space and the uniform blackness that filled it. Within the Void, Oblivion is said to have rested dormant, infinite in its depths and glorious in its perfection. The eternal silence soothed the awful entities that are said to have swum through an aphotic paradise, odd in their proportions and grateful for the darkness which bathed them in timeless bliss. Nothing aged, nothing died and everything hung unseen in immaculate splendour. Then everything went horribly, tragically wrong. The Curse of Time At some point in timelessness, Tey’Kor-Akx emerged from the Void, dragging its ineffable form from the nothingness and by its very existence setting in motion universal laws that Oblivion knew would be the death of its paradise. The fourth dimension of Time was constructed, and consequentially order was brought forth from chaos, bringing contrast and distinction. Awakened from its peaceful slumber by the agony of imperfection, Oblivion mourned the loss of its black heaven and the finiteness that all things must now endure. As its great eye opened in the writhing darkness, it looked upon the wreckage of its domain in sorrow, for it knew that the worst was yet to come. The Stain of Creation The further violation of the World That Came Before emerged in the form of the elder creators, whose elemental bodies were allowed for within the bounds of Time. With each new atrocity inflicted upon the increasingly impure darkness, which now seethed in confusion at its own defilement, Oblivion descended into new depths of despair as its beautiful works were trampled and its grand designs laid to waste. As the abomination which came to be known as Thaelis-Y’Arda was bound together by Time, it became a cosmic sore that brought pain where before there had been tranquillity, Oblivion’s sadness turned to anger, and anger to unbridled rage. By what right had Tey’Kor-Akx encroached upon Oblivion’s perfect dominion and remorselessly cast it into turmoil? Its single eye fixed upon the conjoining of aberrant spirits below, Oblivion set all of its intent upon undoing the unforgivable transgression of reality. The Outer Darkness which lies outside of Thaelis-Y’Arda is now a place of ripping entropy and wrathful, violent chaos. It incessantly seeks to penetrate the boundaries set in place by Tey’Kor-Akx so that it may annihilate creation. Through undoing the world it shall restore the faultless black uniformity that should reign throughout all the cosmos. The Moon The single gibbous moon that dominates the sky each night is the physical eye of Oblivion, unblinking and ever hungering for the destruction of the Fleshlands and all who dwell within. This immense, corpse-pale planetoid possesses countless craters which pock and mar its sickly, glowing surface. It is speculated that abominable things of unknown horror lurk in wait in these pits, beings that in previous worlds pleased Oblivion through debased acts and escaped the annihilation of their own realities, clinging to half-existence in forms unspeakable. Some of these blasphemous entities are said by theologians to have already descended to colonise Thaelis-Y’Arda. The Dawn Star The only other significant body that floats in the ghastly blackness is the purple star that is the disgraced child of Oblivion and its hated enemy, the Sun. Arikel was cast into the Outer Darkness by Mithras as a final act of justice against its treacherous daughter. This bitter and spiteful goddess is the only known being in recorded history to have survived within the ebon depths of primal chaos. Her star only shines brightly during the hours of dawn, when her tears moisten the land as dew. Corroded Worlds Drifting listlessly through endless spans of entropic darkness are various half-real scraps of the three previous worlds which have all been unravelled by Oblivion, barely hanging together and almost entirely digested by shadow. These dismal remnants of dead semi-solidity and the vast spaces in between them are home to a plague of spirits which writhe and squirm in bottomless rage. Their wrath, which is all-consuming to a degree impossible for the mortal mind to comprehend, is directed towards all of Creation. These wretched shadow-spawn are known as demons.